What is Website Personalization? Best Practices with Examples

Website personalization creates a unique one-on-one experience for your online users right when they visit your website. As a website owner, if you can create a unique personalized experience for your visitors, they will be happy and peaceful. The reason is simple. You are using their purchase histories on your site to make a customized design for the individuals.

So, every time they come back to your site, they will find everything they are looking for right in front of their nose. To create website personalization, you will have to make a note of various basic behaviors of your customers. With its help, you can reduce your website’s bounce rate significantly. Today, we are going to show you how to create website personalization for better conversions and enhanced brand prestige. 

What is Website Personalization? [Definition]

Website personalization is the method of personalizing your website in a way that serves a unique and customized experience for every customer of your site. Instead of providing your visitors with a single and wide experience, with website personalization you can focus on the preferences and desires of your customers and boost your conversion rate.

Website personalization is like showing your customers all the products and services that you think they would like based on their purchase history. You can use visual cues on your website based on their browsing manners and personal data.

For example, I am visiting your site as a customer and your website has my location information. If you are running an online retail store, you can show me some winter accessories based on the current temperature of my location.

It is not only popular in online retail stores or travel sites, etc. but news channels also show the viewers related news based on their present location. So, no matter what kind of site you are running, website personalization is likely to be beneficial for every site owner.

Key Benefits of Website Personalization

Imagine your day-to-day life. When you visit the supermarket to buy some daily essentials, you know where to look for shampoo. Now if you are visiting this supermarket for a while then you would know where the shampoo section is.

It will save you time and give you some mental satisfaction. But if the manager of the store decides to change the layouts and locations of the different product categories, you will have a hard time finding them out.

Similarly with an online website when you are visiting the store for a while, if they keep a log of your browsing history and you find the items you are looking for right in front of your nose, you wouldn’t want to visit any other store. 

That’s the main benefit of website personalization where the more you address the needs of every user, the less time-consuming and satisfactory their experience will be in your store. But that’s the one thing, what about the others?

1. Attractive Landing Pages

Your website’s landing page is the first thing a new and returning visitor notices and it also creates a brand identity. The landing page typically shows what you offer on your website and how it can be beneficial for your potential customers. If you want to stand out from your competitors, you can add a special effect to these landing pages.

For example, you can greet your customers with their names, greet them with good morning/good evening/etc. messages based on their timezone, and more. You can also show them customized products and services based on their current location and weather type.

For example, if your customer’s name is Amanda and she lives in Canada, show her some comfortable winter wear in a banner with a caption like “Amanda, it’s cold outside, don’t forget your jacket.” Your customer will find this approach interesting and will probably refer your site to their friends to expand your reputation. 

2. More Qualified Leads

If you keep a log of your customer's browsing histories and purchase histories, it will help you create customized recommendations more easily. Leads that are well nurtured and properly segmented are more likely to create more leads.

Even though this type of approach is not going to be super satisfactory for a new visitor, it will generate more revenues from the long-term and old customers. 

3. More Loyal Customers

As humans, we like people who make us happy and take care of our needs. Likewise, your customers will like you even more if you value their choices and remember their tiny details. Website personalization takes help from various tools to create a warm, welcoming, and customized website for your customers to earn their loyalty.

Your customers are bound to be loyal to you if you show that you understand them like no one else.

4. Less Bounce Rate

It goes without saying that when you offer something to someone that you know they want, they will like you and keep you around. Therefore, if your website’s bounce rate is increasing, you can take help from website personalization tools and reduce your bounce rate. Less bounce rate will help you create a better position in the Google SERP so that you can attract more customers and eventually, generate more leads.

5. Better Customer Experience

If you take inspiration from Netflix and YouTube, you will see that they have a massive userbase. What’s the reason? They show customized content to the customers to keep them around. If you show them what they want, they are going to enjoy it and give you the credit for making them happy.

6. Better Brand Reputation

Every benefit of website personalization that we talked about above has a few things in common. They are focused on generating more leads by creating user satisfaction and brand reputation. So, if you want to boost your brand name, besides promoting your website, you should look to create a well-personalized website for the buyers.

Now that you know what website personalization is and how it can serve your online business, it’s time to find out how it is done.

How to Accomplish Website Personalization?

Website personalization is an art that shows your customers that they are valuable to you by using visual elements. However, to create a proper website personalization, you will have to gain users’ insight without compromising their privacy. Here, we are going to show how it works.

Understand The Fundamentals of Your Website

You will have to understand the challenges of your business first and then you will have to determine how website personalization can bring value to your brand. And to do that, you will have to find out the answers to some of these questions:

• How Do You Pinpoint Your Target Audience?

Every online or offline store focus on gaining as many customers as possible. However, that does not mean that you will keep attracting the wrong customers and still gain success. You will have to find out your target audience first (people who might be interested in your products and services). This you can do by keeping an eye on the visitors of your site and analyzing what products they are buying.

• How Do You Understand What Your Customers Want?

Once you identify your target audience, the next step is to find out what services and products they have in mind when they visit your online store. To do that, you can take a note of the keywords they are using while searching for products, their browsing histories, asking their preferred choices, etc.

• How Do You Convey Your Message Using Website Personalization?

After learning about their preferences, it’s time to draft a message about what you want to represent to your users. This message will be shown on your landing page as well. Try to include videos, images, textual content, offers and discounts, and obviously a powerful call-to-action button.

• How Do You Conduct Personalization on Various Webpages?

You will have to find out the web pages where you want to unite with your target audience. For example, homepage, category page, checkout page, pricing page, etc, are the best places on your website where you can conduct website personalization. However, each of these pages will have different targets. For example, if you personalize the checkout page, your goal will be to help the customers to complete the transaction in the fastest way possible, and so on. 

Personalize Your Website Using Your Users’ Data

Based on different data obtained from your customers, you can personalize your website. Here are the things website owners use the most:

• Location

Geo-location opens up a wide range of opportunities to help you create a customized experience for your users. For instance, you are operating a retail store from India, and you want to expand your business to other countries Like Japan, Srilanka, etc. you can show some discounts to your customers who are coming from Japan to get better conversions.

You can also target your users based on their present location and show them products that are popular or unique in their geography. Displaying different products to different people based on their location is surely going to create some revenue for you.

• The Behaviour of the Visitors

There are various specialized analytical tools that allow you to observe the interaction of your customers with your platform. You can keep a record of their navigation, how they are getting engaged with your website’s content, what call-to-action strategies are working on them, and more. You can also keep a note of the search queries they use, the categories they are widely interested in, the pages from where they exit your website, etc. All this behavioural information of your customers will help you create a tremendous website personalization.

Once you collect all this data to create a website personalization strategy, there are a few advanced tools that can help you with the process.

Best Website Personalization Tools to Try Out Today

Website personalization tools have a wide variety and that’s why it can be difficult to choose one for your website. However, here are some of the most common tools that can help you reach your ideal regardless of your business goals.

1. Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a free website personalization suite that also has a paid enterprise version. With it, you can perform experiments, segments of the users, and so on. You won’t need to be tech-savvy to use Google Optimize because it comes with an intuitive interface and easy-to-deploy methods.

2. Sleeknote

Sleeknote is a specialized web-personalization tool for retail and e-commerce stores. It has various budget-friendly prices to choose from and some nice templates and formats. With it, you can create product recommendations, offer discounts and offers to your target audience with ease.

3. ZAG Interactive

Generally, ZAG Interactive is a website personalization agency that has a headquarter in Massachusetts, US. With their help, not only you can create a great website design but also analyze the behaviour of your customers. They will help you implement successful website personalization experiences.

Wrapping Up

Website personalization has one thing that you can count as a drawback which is, it somewhat compromises the privacy of your customers. However, it has many benefits as we discussed in this article which are both applicable to your users and business as well. Regardless, while creating a website personalization strategy, don’t overdo your recommendations.

The concept is obviously to promote your business and show the customers what they find relevant. But they can also feel irritated if you misuse the advantage. Also, while putting website personalization into your business plan, try to be accurate with your target customers and the products of their choices.

If you show a vegan non-vegetarian recipes, he is surely not going to be your customer. Similarly, you will have to track and monitor the customer analysis regularly because people change and so do their choices. 

Overall, if you keep these instructions in mind, you will be able to pull off a successful website personalization strategy. If need any help, feel free to browse our other articles.